Old Gold Mountain

By Bradley W. Wright

Justin Vincent is a San Francisco based artist who leads a secret double life as a cat burglar. He likes the freedom, money, and self-determination his unusual career provides but also increasingly feels that it is a life he fell into by accident. When a valuable painting is stolen from his lover, Valerie, Justin agrees to use his underworld contacts and knowledge of the black market to help. The search leads him to an antiquities dealer who has fallen on hard times and a mysterious European middle man. With the help of his friend Ashna, a skilled hacker, and Gabrielle, owner of an art gallery in Nice, Justin gathers clues that lead him to a mysterious chateau in the South of France and a dangerous web of secrets and lies. To escape with his life and complete his objective, Justin’s skill, luck, and perseverance will be tested to their utmost limit.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Black Opal Books
• Release date: Mar 17, 2018
• ISBN: 9781626948808

Bradley W. Wright

Biography I am a writer, teacher, and educational technology professional. I was born in the midwest and grew up in Seattle but have been slowly migrating southward with stops in Portland, Eugene, San Francisco, and now Los Angeles where I live with my wife, son, and JiJi the cat. I studied Dance and English Literature as an undergraduate and Anthropology in grad school. Before embarking on my current career, I worked as a professional ballet dancer.

Book preview

Justin Vincent is a San Francisco based artist who leads a secret double life as a cat burglar. He likes the freedom, money, and self-determination his unusual career provides but also increasingly feels that it is a life he fell into by accident. When a valuable painting is stolen from his lover, Valerie, Justin agrees to use his underworld contacts and knowledge of the black market to help. The search leads him to an antiquities dealer who has fallen on hard times and a mysterious European middle man. With the help of his friend Ashna, a skilled hacker, and Gabrielle, owner of an art gallery in Nice, Justin gathers clues that lead him to a mysterious chateau in the South of France and a dangerous web of secrets and lies. To escape with his life and complete his objective, Justin’s skill, luck, and perseverance will be tested to their utmost limit.

KUDOS FOR OLD GOLD MOUNTAIN

TAYLOR JONES SAYS: In Old Gold Mountain by Bradley W. Wright, Justin Vincent is an artist, and an art thief. During the day, he’s a successful sculptor, and by night, he’s an equally successful cat burglar. When his lover, Valerie, has an important painting stolen from her house, Justin uses his skills to track down the painting. But the painting has been sold on the black market, and the search will take Justin to the limit of his skills and endurance, and he will be lucky to escape with his life. Wright combines superb character development, vivid descriptions, and fast-paced action to create an exciting and suspenseful thriller. A really great read. ~ Taylor Jones, The Review Team of Taylor Jones & Regan Murphy

Old Gold Mountain by Bradley W. Wright is the story of a sculptor/art thief, Justin Vincent, who has begun to have second thoughts about his secret life. As he struggles with his dilemma, his lover, Valerie, has a valuable painting stolen from her home. Even though the painting is insured, the artist is a friend of Valerie’s, and he left the painting in her keeping. Too embarrassed to tell the artist that she’s lost the painting, she begs Justin to use his skills and contacts in the black market art community to find the painting and get it back. The hunt takes Justin from the hills of San Francisco to Italy and then the South of France, dealing with antiquities dealers, crooked lawyers, and mafia members, barely escaping with his life, and requires the use of all his skills, his wits, and the help of a computer hacker. Not exactly your average heist. Old Gold Mountain is an intriguing mystery, a tense thriller, and an adventurous romp. Combining mystery, suspense, action, and exotic settings, this one will keep you on the edge of your seat all the way through. I thoroughly enjoyed it. ~ Regan Murphy, The Review Team of Taylor Jones & Regan Murphy

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank my first readers David Hunkins and Shanti Markstrom for their valuable critiques and suggestions. I would also like to thank Lauri at Black Opal Books for taking a chance on this manuscript and my two amazing Black Opal Books editors Reyana and Faith.

OLD GOLD MOUNTAIN

BRADLEY W. WRIGHT

A Black Opal Books Publication

Copyright © 2018 by Bradly W. Wright

Cover Design by Shanti Markstrom

All cover art copyright © 2018

All Rights Reserved

EBOOK ISBN: 978-1-626948-80-8

EXCERPT

A favor for a friend had me running for my life. Maybe I was in the wrong business...

I rolled over a big rock which tore at my parka then came up against a tree trunk with a bump. Hurriedly, I rose to a crouch and got behind the tree. As I did so, I heard another shot and pieces of bark showered my left cheek. I kept moving, dodging between trees, heading downhill. I heard several more shots as I ran but none seemed to come as close as the one that had struck the tree. I didn’t dare look back but I had a good guess as to the identity of my pursuer.

How the hell did he find me? I wondered. Then it struck me: he must have been waiting for me. He had taken a chance on me visiting Gabrielle, had seen me go by on my way there, then had waited for me to pass on my way back. Smart. I should have considered the possibility. I wondered how many bullets Legere’s gun held. I didn’t know anything about guns, but I had held it in my hand and I knew it was not full size. I had a notion that a full-size handgun might hold about twenty rounds. I knew a compact handgun would hold more than six but less than twenty. Maybe twelve? I would not have bet my life on it. He had fired about seven or eight rounds so far. Did he have an extra clip?

I kept moving down the hill. I could hear him following, bounding down the hill after me, his feet sliding in the leaves and dirt with every step. Two more shots rang out.

DEDICATION

for Shanti and Taren

CHAPTER 1

July 12 ~ December 9:

I had Hilary Hahn’s recording of the Bach Partitas on the stereo. The car windows were open and the smell of the sun warmed Northern California redwood forest was intoxicating--simultaneously sweet and pungent, clean and earthy. It was a nice place for a drive but an even better place for a walk. Rounding a gentle curve, I spotted my turn off, slowed, and bumped off the edge of the pavement onto soft dirt and pine needles. The single-lane access road led straight into the forest, ending after about two hundred yards at a small dirt-and-gravel trailhead parking area. I set the brake and shut off the engine. For a moment, I just sat there, enjoying the silence and earthy smell drifting in. A glance at the clock on the dashboard reminded me I was on a schedule, though, so I rolled up the windows, climbed out of the car, and retrieved my daypack from the rear seat. Before leaving the city that morning, I had outfitted myself in typical hiker garb: cargo shorts, trail runners, T-shirt, and hooded fleece pullover in drab colors. My pack was probably a bit larger than average but not enough to attract attention. On my wrist was a recently purchased, aggressively masculine GPS watch. I wasn’t much of a gadget person but the GPS unit was going to come in handy. I also had a well-used SLR camera on a shoulder strap.

It was my fourth trip to this particular spot in the last few months. I’d been taking pictures of trees and posting them to a photo sharing site, and I’d also told a few people casually that I was working on an art project about trees.

I had a pretty good hike ahead of me, so I locked the car and set off, gnawing bites of salmon jerky while I walked and snapping occasional pictures. The forest was fragrant and damp. I saw some fresh chanterelles poking up from the duff a few feet off the path but left them. After a couple of miles, I came to a diverging path, less wide, with lower branches creating an almost solid roof of foliage, and turned onto it. There was a stream paralleling this new trail and I could hear the gurgling water as I walked.

After another mile, I stopped and checked my GPS. This was the spot. I sat on a rock to rest and drank some water. A couple of minutes later I was ready. I found a space between two trees and left the path. Now I was bushwhacking through redwood forest, carefully hopping over ferns, using fallen trees as pathways. Redwood forest was not too bad when you were off-trail but you could step on a rotten log and twist an ankle if you were not careful. I had done some off-trail hiking over the last weeks to practice, and I had a good idea of how much distance I could cover in a fixed amount of time. I knew how far I needed to go and calculated it should take about an hour.

I checked my GPS regularly to make sure I was on course. After about forty-five minutes, I suddenly saw the road below which meant I had been moving faster than I thought--probably a bit amped up. I slowed and crept carefully down the slope until I was about twenty feet from the road. I had hit it almost dead on. The house was twenty yards down the road to my right so I moved across the slope until I was even with it. I had a good view, and I was well concealed in the trees, so I went ahead and changed into the clothes I had packed in my backpack: black cargo pants, long sleeved black T-shirt, black knit cap. I stowed various items in my pockets including a thin pair of black gloves and some tools. I also took a telescoping tube three inches in diameter at the widest end out of my bag and hung it by a small strap crosswise over my shoulders. I was early, as I often was, so I sat down, leaning against a tree trunk, and thought back over the series of events that had led me to this place...

***

It had started several months before with a job--a catering gig. I saw an ad for on-call catering help and applied via email. A few days later, they responded. I used a throwaway email address and a fake name. I had forged papers to go along with the fake name, and I was pretty sure they wouldn’t ask any questions. I had done that kind of work before so I knew a lot of my co-workers would be undocumented. Like most service industry employers, large catering companies didn’t worry much about identity and background checks. They would be chronically understaffed if they did. The company was called A Touch of Elegance. I went in for a brief interview, and they said they would reach out when they needed help.

My fake ID and Social Security card listed me as Dustin Cruz. I had to think of something, and that was the name that popped into my head. It was an amalgamation of the names of two friends from high school. A friend of a friend had recommended a guy, who could do the work, so I made an appointment and showed up at his apartment in West Oakland in the middle of the day on a weekday. I guess it wasn’t unusual for people to forget to come up with a name before they arrived at his kitchen table. Or maybe people just assumed it was part of the service. I remember his blank stare and the smell of his filter-less cigarettes. His supplies were neatly arranged on the surface of the table which was buckled from spills and scarred with burns. Three small children were watching cartoons in the next room. One little girl kept wandering into the kitchen doorway and staring at me with huge, dark eyes. The papers were high quality and I had used them several times. Dustin was similar to my real name Justin. I went through a phase in my teens when I read a lot of old hard-boiled detective novels--Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler. A piece of advice from one of those books stuck with me. It said when choosing a fake name, you should go with something that sounds like your real one. That way you will respond more naturally. It seemed to work fairly well. When I was on a temp job, I was Dustin. My real last name, Vincent, sounded nothing like Cruz, but it was what I came up with, and I stuck with it.

An email from A Touch of Elegance showed up in the inbox of my disposable account a couple of days later. It was from a manager named Fred and asked if I could do setup and help serve at a house party. The catering company mainly did private parties at people’s homes which was why I had answered their ad instead of somebody else’s. I didn’t need the money. I was after something different: anonymous access to nice houses. I was free the night of the party so I wrote back and accepted.

The address Fred gave me when he forwarded the details the next day was up in Mill Valley, not far from Muir Woods, off a curving road running up the lower slope of Mt. Tamalpais. When I saw the address, I had a good idea of what it would be like--quiet, wooded, and serene. Mill Valley real estate was very expensive and very exclusive. The particular area where the house was located was, if anything, even more so.

I arrived early and parked my borrowed car in the lot of a church a quarter mile down the road as instructed. They didn’t want the help taking up prime parking near the house. It was a Saturday, and I was the first to arrive so the lot was empty. The long shadows of redwoods and the reddening afternoon sunlight looked good stretching across the blacktop surface of the lot and climbing up over a carved wooden sign near the street advertising Sunday Services, All Welcome.

I pushed the button to lock the car and set off walking up the hill in the eerie silence of the semi-rural Marin suburbs. A red tail hawk was circling high up above, and I heard small creatures rustling in the underbrush, hiding out under the leaves, trying not to be dinner for the raptor.

It was a good ten degrees warmer than in the city, and I had worked up a light sweat by the time I made it up to the top of the hill. The residence was what the real estate people called a snout house with double garage doors facing the road, a blank second story rising up among the trees, and not much more of the house visible from the front. The lot was large and sloped with plenty of forested land on either side. I guessed at probably one lower level, built into the hill, with walls of windows facing the wooded hillside and looking out over the Bay. Probably a great view. I had mapped it before coming out and I knew there was state and federal park land across the road and also on the slope below the house. A number of public hiking trails passed close to the location. There were other houses on the road but the closest was over a hundred yards away and hidden by trees.

I found some shade under a big old redwood across the road and waited. it was pleasant sitting there on a mossy boulder in the warm afternoon shade just staring at the house and letting my mind wander. I didn’t spend much time in nature. I lived in the city and spent most of my time there. My childhood though, was spent in the country, and when I sat in nature my mind flowed back to that feeling of peace and silence. After about fifteen minutes, I saw the catering van coming up the road, flashing white between the trees, and walked out to meet it.

Fred, the crew manager, parked in the driveway and got out. He was a middle-aged guy with an acne-scarred face, wearing a white chef’s jacket already starting to show rings of sweat under the arms. We exchanged pleasantries while he retrieved his clipboard from the van and took a minute to read over the instructions, occasionally running a worn rag from his back pocket across his forehead.

It says we can pull into the garage and unload. The owners won’t be here till later. Got a garage opener here somewhere. He dug through the console in the van and eventually came up with the opener.

The door rolled up revealing a big space all nicely finished and painted. Everything in the garage was neatly arranged--rakes, shovels, weed whacker, clippers, etc. all hung on evenly spaced hooks. At the far end and wrapping around halfway across the back wall were matching white plastic bins stacked on industrial shelving. I imagined if I started opening those bins I would find one for Christmas decorations, one for camping gear, one for extra blankets and sheets, one for cleaning products...I shuddered. Suburban living gave me the creeps. I’d lived in the country and in the city but never in the weird, liminal in-between. I’m sure it’s fine. I’m just not used to it.

A white Range Rover was parked beside the open spot. Fred pulled the van in, and we began unloading tables, bins of prepped food, bags of ice in coolers, and more bins of plates, silverware, napkins, table cloths. Once the van was empty Fred parked it out on the road. He came back and checked his clipboard again, running a short, callused finger along under the text as he read.

The door should be unlocked. There’s a security system. Wait here. He opened the door that led from the garage into the house, stepped up into a dim hallway, and disabled the alarm system via a panel opposite the door. He was standing between me and the keypad so that there was no angle from which I could see him entering the code. We started carrying everything inside and I saw right away that my earlier guess was correct. The short hallway opened into a soaring entry with a grand staircase leading up to the second story and also down to lower levels. It was a modified Cliff May style Northern California mansion with open plan, concrete floors, high ceilings, and lots of raw wood. The second floor ended at the midpoint of the house. The back half had a full height, peaked ceiling. Under that ceiling was an informal living room area with sofas and chairs. To the right of that was a giant open kitchen with the ubiquitous, stainless steel restaurant grade appliances. There was a wall of windows, and a balcony wrapping the entire back side of the house. The view, as I had guessed, was good. I could see the bay in the distance and the red-orange flare of low, late afternoon sunlight reflecting off the water.

As we moved back and forth between garage and kitchen carting food and equipment, I began to surreptitiously check out the art on the walls. This place was a bonanza. I saw two Rauschenberg prints, some good photos by Sherman and Leibowitz, a few big abstract paintings by unfamiliar artists, and, glimpsed through a high, open entryway to the formal dining room, a Lichtenstein lithograph.

Just as we were finishing packing all the gear in I heard the garage door open, a powerful engine purr and die, and, not long after, footsteps clacking across the polished concrete floor toward the kitchen. A small man entered, dressed casually but expensively in jeans, loafers, and a well pressed blue Oxford shirt. He was middle aged and handsome with a receding hairline, gray at the temples, and sharp features. A few steps behind him came another man, also handsome but rangy and larger boned. He was similarly dressed but with more flair and pops of bright color. He wore architectural glasses with aquamarine frames. To my surprise, I saw that he was carrying a large, brightly colored tropical bird on his wrist. I don’t know much about birds. It might have been a parrot, maybe a macaw. The bird turned sideways, glaring at us with one bright eye, and raised a purple/yellow/blue wing, bobbing its head slowly up and down.

Hello, said the first man, Looks like you got in all right. I’m Carl, and this is Bill. And this--, He gestured to the bird. --is the birthday girl Lucille.

Lucille let out a piercing shriek and flapped her wings. Bill walked over to a large tangle of what appeared to be driftwood suspended from the ceiling by several steel cables. Lucille carefully clambered off his wrist onto a branch. I noticed then that the floor below the hanging driftwood was covered with seeds, shells, bits of chewed plastic, and large, irregular circles of dried bird shit.

Fred stepped forward, shook Carl’s hand, and they went off toward the formal dining room to go over the plan for the evening. I kept my face turned away from the home owners as much as possible, unloading bins onto the counters. Bill brushed by me, took a diet soda from the giant refrigerator, gave Lucille a pat on the head, and headed off up the grand stairway leaving me alone with the bird. The master suite must be upstairs, I thought. Several moments later, I jumped and almost dropped the two champagne flutes I was unloading, when the bird let out another massive shriek and shouted very clearly in a creepy, high-pitched but human-like voice, Lucille is the birthday girl.

Carl’s answer rang out from the dining room in a baby talk voice I wouldn’t have expected from him. Yes, she is, Yes, she is!

Soon, a crew of house cleaners arrived, then more catering crew members trickled in by ones and twos. One of the cleaners set to work on hands and knees cleaning the area under Lucille’s perch. Canapés were assembled and slid into the oven on large baking sheets, tables were set up, wine placed in decorative buckets full of ice to chill, glasses set out at the ready. Before I knew it, we were into what I thought of as the swirl--a state familiar to me from the old days when I was in college and worked banquets at fancy hotels. There was no time to stop, no time to escape the bustle, you just had to surrender to the swirling, clanking, well-choreographed but intense dance of preparation, service, clean up. At some point, a string quartet arrived and set up in one corner, tuned their instruments, and began playing a Bach prelude to warm up. I slipped into a guest bathroom and quickly changed into my service outfit of black pants, white shirt, black waiter jacket.

A few minutes after I finished dressing, Lucille’s birthday party commenced with the arrival of the first guests. I soon learned that the proper terminology was hatch-day party. This seemed to be Carl’s running joke for the evening, and I heard him repeating it to several different groups of guests as I passed through the various rooms with constantly replenished trays of hors-d’oeuvres. Through the blur of amiable conversation, well-dressed guests, baroque strings, lipsticked mouths gobbling canapés, champagne flutes drained and placed on my tray, I found time to glance at the art on the walls and my initial impression was reinforced. There was probably two million dollars or more worth of fine art hanging in the house. I liked Carl and Bill’s taste. It was good stuff, well chosen. Their taste in furniture was nice too, simple but conservative. I didn’t see a lot of the obvious stuff you’d see in every nouveau-riche tech worker’s loft. I’d been to social events at more than a few houses, condos, and apartments where the host’s idea of decorating was apparently walking into the fancy modern furniture store and ordering one of each.

Around nine p.m., the guests were all